Privacy Statement

Privacy Statement

Last updated: February 2012 - Microsoft is committed to protecting your privacy.
This privacy statement applies to the data collected by Microsoft through the Spectrum
Observatory site (the "Site"); it does not apply to other online or offline Microsoft
sites, products, or services.

Collection of Your Information

We will ask you when we need information that personally identifies you or allows
us to contact you.

We may collect information about your visit to the Site. For example, we may use
Web site analytics tools to retrieve information from your browser, including the
site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you used to find our Site,
the pages you view within the Site, your browser add-ons, and your browser's width
and height. Additionally, we collect certain standard information that your browser
sends to every Web site you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language,
access times and referring Web site addresses.

In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions
with Microsoft, information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined
with information obtained through other Microsoft services. We may also supplement
the information we collect with information obtained from other companies. For example,
we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive a general geographic
area based on your IP address in order to customize certain services to your geographic
area.

Use of Your Information

The information collected on this Site will be used to operate the Site and to provide
the service(s) or carry out the transaction(s) you have requested or authorized.
Information collected during a session may also be used to personalize your advertising
experience during that session.

In support of these uses, Microsoft may use your information to provide you with
more effective customer service, improve the Site and any related Microsoft products
or services, perform statistical analysis, and make the Site easier to use by eliminating
the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information or by customizing the
Site to your particular preferences or interests.

We may use your information to provide you with important information about the
product or service that you are using, including critical updates and notifications.
Additionally, with your permission, we may send you information about other Microsoft
products and services, and/or share your personal information with Microsoft partners
so they may send you information about their products and services.

Microsoft occasionally hires other companies to provide limited services on
our behalf, such as Web site hosting, packaging, mailing, and delivering prizes,
answering customer questions about products and services, and sending information
about our products, special offers, and other new services. We will only provide
those companies the personal information they need to deliver the service. They
are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited
from using that information for any other purpose. We may access or disclose information
about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply
with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights
or property of Microsoft or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements
or policies governing your use of the services; or (c) act on a good faith belief
that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft
employees, customers or the public. We may also disclose personal information as
part of a corporate transaction such as a merger or sale of assets.

Information that is collected on the Site may be stored and processed in the United
States or any other country in which Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries,
or service providers maintain facilities. Microsoft abides by the safe harbor framework
as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and
retention of data from the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland.

Control of Your Information

Except as otherwise described in this statement, personal information you provide
on the Site will not be shared outside of Microsoft and its controlled subsidiaries
and affiliates without your permission.

Please be aware that this privacy statement and any choices you make on the Site
will not necessarily apply to personal information you may have provided to Microsoft
in the context of other, separately operated, Microsoft products or services.

Security of Your Information

At Microsoft, we take the security of your personal information very seriously.
We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal
information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store
the personal information you provide on computer servers with limited access that
are located in controlled facilities. Additionally, if we transmit sensitive personal
information (such as a credit card number) over the Internet, we protect it through
the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

Use of Cookies

We may use cookies on this Site to enable you to sign in to our services or to help
personalize the Site. A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard
disk by a Web server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a Web
server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies cannot be used to run
programs or deliver viruses to your computer. One of the primary purposes of cookies
is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. For example, if you personalize
a Web page, or navigate within a site, a cookie helps the site to recall your specific
information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of delivering relevant
content, eases site navigation, and so on. When you return to the Web site, the
information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the
site's features that you customized. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies.
Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your
browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you are using Internet Explorer,
search for "Cookies" in the Help menu to find detailed instructions. If you choose
to decline cookies, you may not be able to use interactive features of this or other
Web sites that depend on cookies.

Use of Web Beacons

Pages on this Site may contain electronic images known as Web beacons - sometimes
called single-pixel gifs - that may be used to assist in delivering cookies, to
allow us to count users who have visited those pages, and to deliver co-branded
services. We may also include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or our
newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon.

Microsoft may also employ Web beacons from third parties in order to help us compile
aggregated statistics and determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns
or other operations of our sites. We prohibit Web beacons on our sites from being
used by third parties to collect or access your personal information. We may work
with other companies that advertise on our sites to place Web beacons on their sites
in order to allow us to develop statistics on how often clicking on an advertisement
on a Microsoft site results in a purchase or other action on the advertiser's site.

Display of Advertising

Many of the Web sites and online services we offer, as well as those of our partners,
are supported by advertising. Through our ad delivery platform, we may display ads
on our own sites and the sites of our advertising partners.

When we display online advertisements to you, we will place a persistent cookie
on your computer in order to recognize your computer each time we display an ad
to you. Because we may serve advertisements on many different Web sites, we are
able to compile information over time about where you, or others who are using your
computer, saw and/or clicked on the advertisements we display. We use this information
to make predictions about your characteristics, interests, or preferences, and to
display targeted advertisements that we believe may be of interest to you. We may
also associate this information with your subsequent visit, purchase, or other activity
on participating advertisers' Web sites in order to determine the effectiveness
of the advertisements.

While we may use some of the information we collect in order to personalize the
ads we show you, we designed our systems to select ads based only on data that does
not personally and directly identify you. For example, we may select the ads we
display according to certain general interest categories or segments that we have
inferred based on (a) demographic or interest data, including any you may have provided
when creating an account (e.g. age, zip or postal code, and gender), demographic
or interest data acquired from other companies, and a general geographic location
derived from your IP address; (b) the pages you view and links you click when using
Microsoft’s and its advertising partners’ Web sites and services; and (c) the search
terms you enter when using Microsoft’s Internet search services, such as Live Search.

These companies may offer you a way to opt out of ad targeting based on their cookies.
You may find more information by clicking on the company names above and following
the links to the Web sites of each company. Some of these companies are members
of the Network Advertising Initiative,
which offers a single location to opt out of ad targeting from member companies.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

We may occasionally update this privacy statement. When we do, we will also revise
the "last updated" date at the top of the privacy statement. For material changes
to this privacy statement, we will notify you either by placing a prominent notice
on the home page of our Web site or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage
you to periodically review this privacy statement to stay informed about how we
are helping to protect the personal information we collect.

Contact Information

Microsoft welcomes your comments regarding this privacy statement. If you have questions
about this statement or believe that we have not adhered to it, please contact us.